I have decided it is finally tiime to start scanning thousand of slides I have taken over the years as well as some of my late Mom's that have been proof of the longevity of Kodachromes; however, new scanners compatible with Linux-based OS (even some that use Vuescan) are apparenlty not available. I would like to know what works, even if it requires the purchase of used equipment.

Thank you,

John

gotfw

02-22-2014 10:40 AM

The days of demand for these scanners is long past & from my experience they're not being manufactured anymore. Hence you'll probably have to resort to searching for a used unit. And when/if you find one, it seems it's going to cost you a premium over what was the list price for new units. Nikon Coolscan might be a place to start but be prepared to spend a couple grand.

Else otherwise there are services that use "Drum Scanners". These units produce superior results but run up a bill in a hurry. So you'll have to do a cost/benefit based on volume and desired quality.

I have decided it is finally tiime to start scanning thousand of slides I have taken over the years as well as some of my late Mom's that have been proof of the longevity of Kodachromes; however, new scanners compatible with Linux-based OS (even some that use Vuescan) are apparenlty not available. I would like to know what works, even if it requires the purchase of used equipment.

I know this isn't what you asked for, but if this is a one-time thing (that is, you're going to scan this batch of slides and not take more slide pictures), it might be cheaper/easier to just talk to your local photo shop. Ask if they have a scanning service, or check out one online, like this:

No auto-feed, but inexpensive. Even IF you find one used, you're probably looking at near $1000 for the unit itself. And there's more math to consider. Let's say you have 3,000 slides to scan (not unreasonable). The PREVIEW rate for a modern scanner is 8 seconds. Not including time to switch slides, that's over 6.5 hours...for just PREVIEWS, not a scan that anyone would be happy with. To adjust things, switch slides, and save files you'd probably be looking at 10 minutes per slide; or three months, at 40 hours per week, to crank through them all. How much is your time worth???

And if you want to save files as PSD's or some other format suitable for archival/printing, you're going to want high resolution, lossless. So...figure about 200GB, or 50 DVD's. Which will ALSO take about ten minutes each to burn, or another 8 hours (full working day). Then you'll have to bear in mind that CD's/DVD's weren't designed to have long-term data storage, so have fun making duplicate sets if you want to the pictures to last for another generation. Same with USB flash or external hard drives...you will have to back up that data too.

For me, it'd be worth my time just to send a box to a professional scanning service, and get it all back in the mail. :)

HansPL

03-12-2014 04:32 PM

I'd recommend Nikon Coolscan — very good, very expensive. Maybe you could get a used one on Ebay and resell it again later.

Also, I'd recommend Vuescan software from http://www.hamrick.com , absolutely worth its money, very powerful, needs some experimenting time to learn. A few years ago I digitized ~900 old slides on a borrowed Coolscan with magazine feeder and Vuescan: every night an unattended batch scan of one or two slide magazines to raw data, next evening manual optimizing (again with Vuescan) from the raw data to jpegs… well, good results even from very discolored slides, but that was a LOT of work through several weeks all in all. (Plus, I had to enslave my sister to dissect the films out of the fogged and glued glassed frames and transfer them to unglassed frames first.)

HansPL

03-12-2014 04:37 PM

A friend of mine used a “slide duplicator“ adapter on a Sony digital camera to digitize his not-so-old and not-so-discolored slides. MUCH faster, though not so good.